The Daily - Mick Jagger Isn_t Sure He Ever Lets the World See the Real Him

0:05From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marchese. Mick Jagger truly needs no introduction. He's the legendary frontman of the Rolling Stones who are releasing a new album called Foreign Tongues. I've been a fan of the Stones since 1994 when I saw them on their Voodoo Lounge tour. It was my first ever rock concert and it left a huge impression.

0:31Since then I've listened to just about every song the band is released from undeniable Classics like my favorite. You can't always get what you want to more obscure tracks like sway And I've always wondered what's Mick Jagger really like? Here's my conversation with Mick Jagger Mick. Hi David. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. That's all right. I have a bunch of questions about the new album Okay, but I'd like to start with a question that comes from a place of pure personal curiosity. So one of my all-time favorite of your songs is Sway from Sticky Fingers. And I always wondered about the first line of that song, the lyrics, which are, did you ever wake up to find a day that broke up your mind, destroyed your notions of circular time? I have not. Have you? No.

1:32So it's a question. Do you remember where that line came from? No, I just made it up at the spur of the moment. We were waiting for Keith to turn up for the session. He was late, and then Mick Taylor and I were there, and Charlie and Bill. And I said, oh, let me try this. And I was just making it up as I go along. So that's why it's a bit random. Yeah, but it makes sense that waiting for Keith Richards would destroy your notion of circular track. I thought maybe it was a more philosophical question.

2:02Yeah, maybe I went back afterwards and spruced it up a bit. Well, thank you for solving that, miss. I appreciate it. So the new album. Yeah. So it's coming just maybe two and a half years after Hackney Diamonds. We recorded it last last year now. And we did it last this time last year, more or less.

2:24The time span between Hackney Diamonds and the previous album of original material was 18 years. Yeah, 18 years. This is quick. Why did it come together so quickly? Well, I think we realized that we had a different method of making records, really. We've been just not being very lackadaisical and we weren't really getting down to it. And so when we got Andy what on board you know we decided that I said I said there's a deadline you know we used to always have deadlines because we had to go on tour with the record the tour starts in March of the record out you know I said the Hackney Diamonds I said the deadline is Valentine's Day are you all gonna remember that so that you know it's like excuses you thought it was March it's Valentine's Day and we almost made it over four weeks we recorded probably I don't know 14 15 songs I mean a lot of stuff it

3:18The way I do things, some of the songs that I write, I demo a lot of them first. So I go in with a friend of mine who plays with the band, Matt Clifford, we demo a lot of the songs that I write. I demo them and I can see they could go here, they could go there, they could be this group, they could be that group. So my version of what I think the song sounds like is already in my head, everything else you layer on top of that. And you might say that bass is great on it. I don't want to change anything. Or I just want to change just the chorus. Or I just want to change this. Or I want to keep the rhythm guitar. Or I don't want to keep the rhythm guitar. I'll do it again. It's complex. Some of the songs on the new album are, I hear them as relationship songs, songs of regret or insecurity. And it's interesting for me

4:16to hear Mick Jagger singing those songs at your age and think about how, you know, they land differently than if you were singing them at 42 or 32. And I want to know from your perspective, like artistically and emotionally, what are the ways that you can inhabit a song now that are different from how you used to inhabit?

4:42Well, first of all, I don't really think about it very much. So, you know, songwriting is about imagination and, you know, it's not all based on true experiences. But you got to play the character of the song, right? Yeah. And the character, but the character seeing the song is, it's a different character for me. So when I'm seeing Mr. Charm, it's obviously a joke character, you know?

5:11And it's supposed to be taking with sense of humor and of course some of the incidents in the verses did happen and I can draw on my own experiences of Talking to women in relationships, but I mean the whole thing of it's not supposed to be taken seriously You don't really think you're mr. Charm, you know Not really, but then you might have another song which is more More heartfelt, you know more not so much humor and Back in your life back in your life, which is a bit more of a kind of fight. It's a classic theme. You know, you meet a woman and then. She never calls you back. You know, you have a great time and she never goes back. Has that happened to you a lot? It's happened to me. Of course it's happened to me. So I can draw on that. I'm not saying it happened yesterday, but you can draw on that on that on that experience when it did happen to you when maybe it happened to me when I was 40. You know, but I can still write about it now. Writing is a.

6:10about imagination, you know, it's not only about personal experience. So it's a mixture of personal experience and a mixture of imagination. You know, I want to maybe put the question in slightly different terms. You know, there's a movie performance of yours that I love when a man from Elysian fields where, you know, you play sort of like a middle-aged, you know, he runs an escort service for women. It's kind of like a...

6:37But that performance has a lot of real feelings of regret in it. And I assume that you wouldn't have been able to give a performance like that earlier in your life in the same way that it would make no sense for you to sing some girls now. No, exactly. But so are there things that you can do in a song or did on this album that you think, oh, I wasn't capable of giving.

7:01of inhabiting that lyric. That's a good question. I mean, it requires a lot of thought to give a good answer. That's okay. That's why we're here. Yeah, you know, I can't really... It's hard for me to think of... I'm trying to think of actual concrete examples of the songs on the record, you know. I mean, you... I mean, I think quite a lot of it you could say that...

7:28I wouldn't have done, I wouldn't have written any of these songs when I was 13 maybe. I mean, honestly, I probably wouldn't have done. And then I've also got into this habit of doing songs that are about personal relationships and then I throw a verse about politics in there. But I think that's a trick that I've learned from other songwriters or I've listened to others because nobody wants to hear a whole song about politics.

7:57I don't put politics, social comment, you know of any kind, it can't be politics, something else. Like a song like the blues song like Rough and Twisted, it's really just like just a stream of consciousness, honestly. You talk about a woman and everything, but then you throw in this stuff, it's obviously about political and it's obviously, you know, the club was called Conspiracy. All they wanted was tyranny. So you find yourself using these tricks.

8:27Did you ever see the John Mulaney special, the comedian John Mulaney, where he does a bit about working with you on Saturday Night Live? Did you ever see that? No, I never saw that. So he has this bit where he's talking about working with famous people on the show and specifically about working with you. And people would ask him, I'm paraphrasing, but people would ask him like, is Mick Jagger nice? Yeah. You know, and he says, Of course, Mick Jagger is not nice. Or he's nice for the version of the life that Mick Jagger has led. And he points out that you play to stadiums of people screaming for you for 50 plus years that's got to change you as a person. Can you articulate how that's changed you as a person? I think, well, obviously, it's not normal.

9:19It's not like most people's lives. No, it's not. It's not. But yeah, it does affect you. You can become disassociated from other people. And a lot of people in show business only hang around with people in show business. Because they got something in common, because they can relate to each other.

9:48that you get disassociated from what people might call real life. Do you think you have? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. And then you can... I mean, you can fight... You do fight against it. It's a conscious effort. It takes conscious effort to fight against being disassociated. What do you do to fight against it? Well, it's quite easy really. I mean, you just...

10:15You just go out and walk on the street on your own and go do normal things and go buy the New York Times. But nevertheless, that's only temporary. I think psychologically your actual state of mind is permanently damaged by this or affected. I think when you're in your...

10:45late 20s and early 30s is a very tough time for people in this business because it's a big ego trip basically. You have to have a huge ego to do this. Lots of people that do this don't have huge egos, have huge problems because they have to manufacture a completely different.

11:06Of course, my personality on stage is not my friend who who says, you know, the standing joke is that I behave at a dinner party like I behave on stage. So was that friend right? Yeah, we make jokes about it because it's absurd what you do on stage. Of course, I'm not really like my stage persona. Jimmy Fallon, which I'm just about to go and do, he he thinks he's doing me when he does me. But it's completely such a exaggerated version of me, but it works for him, you know, his version of me. But I mean, to me, the person to be like that all the time is overbearing, shouting, ego-tripping person. It's like, of course, you're not really like that. But I think when you're in your late 20s and early 30s, you can be like that all the time. And there are people in showbiz that never switch off.

12:02A lot of my comedians and comedians sometimes they can't switch off, they can't stop making jokes. Or they get depressed. But I mean, that's a bit of a sweeping statement. Did you have to learn to switch off? Yeah, I think it comes with age. It's like if you do a movie, you do a character, right? So if you're a method actor and you do this character, you've heard all these stories about method actors.

12:28They take it to the absolute extreme. So they like the character all the time. And then after the movie is over, they're still in the character for a long time. It takes a long time to laugh off the character. So which character do you go back to? What was the character that you're going to retrieve? Is he always going to carry some of that character in his true character? Whatever that is.

12:57This is, I think the show business like dichotomy and it's like a, it's something you learn to live with and you always hope, of course it isn't true, that you always hope that you're a normal so-called normal person underneath. Yeah. It's nice to have the perks though. The perks. Yeah, but it's not about the perks, it's about being these several characters. Yeah.

13:19You know, you're the character that plays the theatre, you're the character that does the interview, you're the character that goes in on the stadium, you're the character in the recording studio, you're the character writing the song. Not this character, all right. No, I'll be another character. Yeah, I'll write a song like, then I'm gonna be this character and I'm gonna go wounded love. Now I'm gonna be like, fuck you, you know. Do you ever let the world see the person underneath the characters? I'm not sure, probably. It's all there.

13:47Songs are pretty direct in a way. As a method of communication, they're relatively direct compared to say a movie where you need like a lot of, you know, you've got someone writing a script and you're changing the script and you want to change your lines and you've got 200 people and then it's all edited in chopped up bits. Records are relatively simple compared to that. There are a handful of...

14:15political lines sprinkled throughout the album. You know, he's saying about scuttling billionaires scrambling to their bolt holes in the sky, about dirty rat autocrats, rubber stamping judges. And I actually find it heartening to know that Mick Jagger sees the same problems out in the world than that the rest of us do. So can you just tell me more about...

14:39why you felt the impulse to include those kinds of lyrics? What are you seeing when you look around the world? Well, I mean, it's not the first time I've done songs with social comment. I like doing it, but in small doses, that's pretty like that. I mean, who does it in huge doses? Hardly anybody. It's pop music, you know? I mean, ringing hollow is more or less completely social comment. Right.

15:08But even then, so I had two songs that were on more or less the same subjects, which is My Love of America, you know? And what's gone wrong? I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

15:36living in the upper west side you know that you know i've got i spend a lot of time in american places that americans have never ever been nor what ever likely to go to you know because they don't know in our world living in new york well we're talking at we're talking now living in our or chicago but i spent a lot of time in these.

15:56weird places. Like what? Just on tour, you see everything. You see everything. How many people from New York that we sit around really go to Cleveland very often. And then you're there for five days. It's not very long, but you can see quite a lot. If you go out every day, you see different sides of it. I mean, I enjoy it. Other wouldn't go out. New Orleans, I know people go to New Orleans and it's a tourist place.

16:25But I mean, you find things there and then you find fantastic music scene. It's a unique town in the United States, completely unique. It's not like any other town. It's not, it's not, you know, so you explore these places and you have a love of the country and everything. So in Riga Hollow, so...

16:48I had another song, but the other song I thought was too down and I rejected it and worked on me hollow instead. It's really a love song to Americans. You know, I fell madly in love with you before we ever met. So before I ever went to America, I was in love with America. Like a lot of European teenagers, you know, were, you know, see the movies and all this. So it's all about that. And then, so then.

17:15talks about, you know, then it goes into the America of now and, you know, how can we, you know, ascertain what's going on? What's the last line of the song, right? I don't remember, but I'm going to buy a brand new hat. Brand new hat. What's that a reference to? Something good is going to happen, I think. That's what it means. Yeah. I heard that as like a...

17:40a passive-aggressive mega reference, but maybe. But you know who the one person that is named by their actual name on the album? I might be missing one. Do you know the one? There's one that Elon Musk is named. Elon Musk, yeah. Mad mogul. Mr. Musk. Yeah, what's your impression of him? I've never met him, so I don't really... I mean, obviously he's usually successful. And you know, he's someone who...

18:08the term rock star gets applied to sometimes. And now it's become kind of a common trope where these tech entrepreneurs are called rock stars. What does an actual rock star think of the way that that term has now become applied to anybody who has sort of the patina of iconic life? It's kind of weird because it's applied to all kinds of people, not just tech people. It's become a phrase that's thrown around for in any form of success. I think it just means that you're just out there in front of a thousand people and you're a huge success. I mean, that's what it means to be called that. I think it's a big compliment to be called that. It's also a compliment to rock stars to use that actual face. I think it devalues rock stars. It devalues it, but it also bigs it up as well. I want to ask something that's sort of related to kind of what you were

19:06talking what we were talking about earlier, how people understand like the persona of Mick Jagger. And my question is to do with how you understand your relationship with your audience. This actually maybe speaks to the politics stuff in a way too, because let me give two counter examples to sort of triangulate the question. So on one poll, we have somebody like Bob Dylan, where if you go see him live, He's great. It almost feels like the crowd is incidental. Like he's going to be doing whatever he's doing whether or not people showed up. On the other end of the spectrum, you have somebody like a Bruce Springsteen who clearly sees his job as engaging in a meaningful back and forth with his audience. It means something different to him. What does your relationship to the audience mean to you? What do they represent all those people out there?

20:01Well, first of all, it depends where you are and what kind of event it is, like the New Orleans event. That's a festival. They didn't come to see you necessarily. You know, they bought their tickets before they knew you were coming. Right, if you play the New Orleans Jazz Festival. You know, we played that.

20:22then we do Summer in the Park in London. You buy those tickets, you buy Glastonbury. You buy those tickets because you like their festival. You always think something's good is going to happen, but you don't know. So they're not necessarily coming to see, they're not your biggest fans necessarily. I'm not saying that they hate you, otherwise it probably wouldn't be there. There's different levels of these kind of people and you have to treat them in a slightly different way. The bottom line of my thing really is that I...

20:52my job in the live music world is just those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can and for two hours or whatever it is to forget all their problems and problems of the world and their mortgages and whatever and if they have problems or just to give them, they can have just the best time.

21:21It's similar going to a sports event, really, because everything else is shout-out. You're just watching it. Who's going to win? You're not worrying about everything else. Those things are out of your mind. I know you're still on the phone, everything. Oh, my little Danny is like a hurt his tooth. But I know you can still have that. I know you can still have that, but in the old days, you never had that, really. So that's my job.

21:51So it's to make them have the best time they possibly haven't. And some audiences want to go completely nuts, you know. And so then you encourage them to go more nuts. And say you can play to some places in the world, it's different, you know, you play in Finland. It's not the same as playing Argentina, you know. There's a different credit. They don't want to go completely so nuts. Maybe they do. I'm just using it as possible, you know.

22:19but so you don't want to be trying to churn them up into like get frustrated that they're not being demonstrative or you don't think they're having a good time because they might be quite relatively calm they might be relatively you know they're having a good time but in there I always say to everyone else that having a good time in their own way but as you go to another place and they're going completely apeshit you know so And your job is to make them more apeshit. That's not the one that want to go apeshit, but let's go apeshit. I want to dig a little deeper on that question. So you're talking about what your job is in those events is to make people have a good time. They want to leave the concert feeling like it was worth it, and they can forget their job. And you don't want to lecture them. You don't want to lecture them. But my question is actually about whether...

23:12like what meaning the job has to you. Like I have a job that has a basic description. It's very different than yours. But my job actually, you know, it means something to me. And when it's working best, it allows me to satisfy curiosity I have about the world, meet people I wouldn't normally meet, ask questions of people that I would never get a chance to ask and learn things that help, you know, that I find are valuable to me as a person. Do you, like what's Mick Jagger's version of that?

23:40Am I being naive and polyanna-ish to think that maybe there is one? I have thought about this. I mean, obviously thought about it. At the beginning of my career, of course, didn't think about it at all. I was just learning how to do what, you know, it's totally your, about you, you know, and the band. And are they gonna, you know, what's the next number? And are they gonna play it right? And am I gonna remember the words? You know, it's like, it's just the basics. You're getting the basics down.

24:09Okay. So now after you've got through that accomplishment, which takes a bit of time to do, but then what you're saying is when I get out there, what does it mean for you? Well, it's a lot of joy for me first off. First of all, it's a huge buzz, you know, adrenaline. And it's a huge adrenaline buzz, which must be the same as for a sport. If you're playing sport, if you playing a football team, you go out and play with 50,000 people. It must be about the same similar buzz. So except me, you know, I don't have anyone coming at me. So it's much easier than playing football. You don't have to dribble around someone and then sing. I don't have to do any of that. But that's where the analogy breaks down. So so you get out there and you get, when you get out there first, you get this massive adrenaline buzz. And then your job really is really you have to control that adrenaline buzz.

25:07You know, you've got to look after yourself first. And while you're doing that first five minutes, then you're evaluating the audience. So you evaluate them, you know, in a good way, I mean, but you're evaluating them. How are they? Yeah, what's the temperature crown? How are they feeling? Are they? Is it cold? You know, is it raining? All these things happen. And, you know, do they, Already enjoying themselves or they feel a bit listless after the wait too long if they had a hard time getting it all these things of contributing factors and while so so then you evaluate the audience and see how they feel. And then a lot of them are very long way away. Which is one of the problems you're playing because mostly I play stadiums right. If you're playing a theater you don't have these problems you can you can you if you're playing a theater you can very quickly become.

26:06a group, you know? And people, when I was, you know, starting out would show me how to do that were like little Richard I had toured with for a long time. He, I had no idea that people even could do what he did. You know, performers didn't do that. They just went out and played their songs and kind of said hello, and that was it. I mean, he was embracing them all, getting them all to, you know, go along with his version of the world, stand up, sit down, and make jokes. And it becomes a community. So for a small time it becomes this community. It's much more difficult to do that in Australia. We still have to do it. So that's why stages have to be big. That's why you have to get down there. That's why you have to pay attention to all these people. And that's why you have to talk to them. Because you want that community for those couple of hours to be a good community. Have fun.

27:02that's your job. I mean, I'm not completely answering your question, but I mean, that's a lot of what I do. You know, I've read a huge amount of interviews with you going back, you know, deck. Poor you. They're interesting, but there are some things that stand out. And one thing that I've noticed that you almost never do in interviews is tell stories about being in the Rolling Stones. And I'm not asking you to you know, be nostalgic or share some intimate detail. But like, there's got to be some like old, you know, chestnut that you break out at cocktail parties or that your kids, if they ask you, hey, what was it? What was it like being on tour with Stevie Wonder in 1972 or whatever that you like a break glass in case of emergency kind of story that you can tell? Is there is there one for something where you mentioned a funny thing that happened when I was in the room? You mentioned to you one or so.

27:59You mentioned Stevie Wonder, so we were playing Mass Effect Garden with Stevie Wonder. We said, come up and we'll do a mash-up of satisfaction and uptight. And so, because they're both the same beat. So it comes on the stage and we do this mash-up uptight. And then someone, and I can't remember whose idea it might be mine, decides that we're going to throw custard pies.

28:29at the end, because it's the last date of the tour and it's the last number of the show. Why wouldn't you throw custom pies? It's rather unfair for Stevie. Everyone's throwing a custom pie, including Stevie's throwing custom pies and everyone's covering custom pies. And I loved it. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for everything. Any questions are interesting.

29:00After the break, Mick and I speak again about whether we'll ever see the Rolling Stones back on the road. I hope so. I want to do it. I'm up for doing it. Mick, we're officially rolling now. OK. So what are we going to speak about today that we didn't speak about before? Oh, there's so many things. But I'd like to start with a question about something that just came to me this morning. OK.

29:41I was watching just clips of you on YouTube and there's a great, it's like a 50 second clip of you, maybe it's backstage, it's just you at a keyboard trying to work through the tune Shine a Light. And you're trying to remember the chords. And it's actually just this, it's a really beautiful short clip because you're playing those gospel chords. There's like to paraphrase the song, there's a little gleam right in your eye.

30:08And it feels like the apparatus of like fame and a crowd or anything like that has fallen away. It's just a musician playing music and loving it. And it's really very pure and sweet. And I wondered, can you share a moment or a memory of just...

30:29when you were playing music and kind of the machinery around the Rolling Stones just fell away and you just had that love and freedom and lost yourself just playing a tune. That's what you do when you're writing. I mean, the occasion that you describe it, I don't really remember, but you said it was backstage. So that's a different thing. You're obviously getting ready for a show and trying to, I don't know what I was doing.

30:55I'm probably going to do that song but maybe I wasn't maybe I was just doodling with that song you know for fun while you're waiting to go on stage sometimes sometimes you I always have a piano in the room and you get hard stuff and and my room's always the quietest because I don't let people end like a load of friends and families they know they can come in but it's like then you have to leave you know and so Yeah. So you can like, you have moments where you just doodle around, you know, what you're describing really is when you're writing. I mean, you don't, you're not thinking about going on stage or anything. If you're at home or in a studio or in a writing studio or somewhere writing, then you're just doodling. That's how songs get made, you know, really is just where you just doodle around. And you don't, you're not thinking about anything else. So the thing about writing songs is because popular songs are

31:55really quiet. They're obviously really short. So, which is due to the length of the 78 record. It's completely arbitrary reason that there are three minutes. The technology imposed this thing on it. I think that's anyway, it doesn't really matter. That's what it is. You know, three minutes, four minutes maximum, something like this. So, so it's not going to be that much. And And it can be quite complex musically, but lyrically, how much lyrics are you going to really stick in? So musically, you know you can just doodle your way through this. So while your mind is free and you're having fun with it, then I think that's the most interesting part of the process. And I think having fun is not like, I don't mean you're all standing around.

32:53drinking and like shouting and jumping up and down. But I mean, your mind is not really being serious. It's playful. Playful is a better word than fun. So you can be playful. And then so if you're playful, you can, you can just let your mind just go this way. And don't be worried if nothing happens, nothing happens. Something will happen later or tomorrow.

33:19I was watching the video for In The Stars recently, which is the one where they use the DNA technology for you guys. And I actually thought it was sort of like a conceptually interesting choice for a variety of reasons, one of which is that, I think of one of the sort of life affirming things about the Rolling Stones is that you've been sort of defiant in terms of like what aging means.

33:47out there doing it and then doing the de-aging. I was like, oh, that's kind of an interesting choice to take. But, you know, I think that an opposite view of the band is being like defiant, defying aging and still being out there is that, you know, you guys all have Peter Pan complexes or something like that. But I want to know what you find like interesting or hard to reckon with in terms of aging or like, what's good about getting older? What's less good?

34:17I don't just mean like, I don't just mean physically, but metaphysically too. There's nothing good about it. Nothing. Wisdom, no. Nothing, you don't get wisdom, you forget everything. I just forgot all my wisdom. I might have had a couple of pearls drop, but I think I probably forgot what the hell. So no, it's not, no, it's not particularly pleasant.

34:44And of course, you can't do things as quickly as you want to and all that sort of thing. And physically, physically, you can't do things that you would like to do. You have to be more careful. You can still do them, but you have to be more careful when you do them. If you're playing goalie in the football team and you're like, OK, you're going goal. Don't put you in goal a lot. I'm not really very good at it.

35:14It's a metaphor for aging, being in gold. You put in gold. I have another philosophical question. Yeah. And this one is about sex. And I'm not going to... It's a big subject. It's a big subject. I'm not going to ask you for any details. So don't worry. It is sort of... So you have publicly been identified...

35:39with sex for a long time. Like a sex symbol, you write songs that are heavily sexual. You know, you're like an avatar of sexiness. You know, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn by saying they have... Sex, drugs and rock and roll we're going into now. Right. You have a, you know, a reputation as sort of a, a libertine maybe, but that's outside perspective. But I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, you also have had like sort of put sex...

36:05as like central to your identity over the years. And I wonder how has your thinking about sex changed over time? Because it changes for everyone. So how has it changed for you, Mick Jagger? Well, it's really difficult. And I don't know the answer, honestly. It's a very good question. And people always say that when I'm thinking about what the fuck am I going to say to him?

36:30I don't really know. I really don't know the answer. You're asking me these questions that is a really hard question and I don't know the answer. If we sat down and we weren't recording this and we weren't doing an interview, we could talk about how that would work and you'd have to tell me how it worked for you because we could compare experiences. Could we? Yeah, probably because that's how you get insights.

36:57I mean, if you're just talking about yourself like a public person, it's weird. The only thing I would say is that throughout your life, your attitude to sex changes and your sexual tastes change. In one's life, sex is not a fixed point. So that's what I think, obviously, everybody's different.

37:23But I would say, and this is not my area of expertise, honestly, because we're into areas of human psychology, sexual drive, all this stuff is all pop psychology. Everyone's read a bit about it, but do they know about it? But my observation is that your attitudes to sex are different in different parts of your life.

37:54Yeah. I mean, your orientation, your sexual orientation may change. It may change completely, or it may change, oh, or avenues might open up to you that you hadn't realized, or you might close avenues that have opened up because you don't like them, or you tried something that you'd liked for a couple of years and then you decide, oh, okay.

38:21And it's like other tastes. It's like tasting art, you know that you when you're very young you might like this kind of pictures and then when you're a bit older you might change your taste in art So I'm not saying sex is like art what I am what I'm saying is you're but but that's a question of taste But you're why is your taste changed? You know what right? There's something is it because of knowledge or is it just because you're bored with it?

38:49Do you know, or is it a combination of all these things? You know, so you're tasting, you're literally tasting food changed. So when you're really young and you like alcohol, you drink the sweet things normally. You know, when you like sweet wine, you're all that's like, great. And then, then someone tells you, that's not really, you shouldn't be drinking that, you know, you should drink this. And you try that and go, I really don't like that, but I'll try it. You know, like when we were really teenage when we're teenagers we like rock music but we other other more snobbish people say you should listen to this jazz you know you listen to jazz you know it's more intellectual you know than so so that in Tom Stoppard's play the real thing he's an he's an intellectual writer it's almost Tom and

39:38But he's going on this program called Desert Island Disc, which is a program where you choose records to take with you on your desert island. And that's the only music you can have. And he says, but all I like is to do Ron Ron. And he's an intellectual. So he says, they expect me to choose Schoenberg and Beethoven. And so he's an intellectual. So it's this thing of being an intellectual.

40:06Yeah, okay. Play me that jazz music. You know, okay. Disney Gillespie. Play me Disney classical music. Okay. Do I really like that or do I like Chuck Berry? You know what I mean? So, well, I'll start to appreciate it. You know, and we used to like play the modern jazz quartet, you know. Oh yeah. Yeah. I used to go and see the, I used to go and see the modern jazz quartet in concert. I mean, it's expensive. Everyone's sitting down very seriously listening to it. No one was like standing up, you know.

40:35Talk about a rabbit hole. I asked you about sex. We ended up at the modern jazz court. How do I get out of that question? But I thought you gave a very, you know, I thought you gave a good answer. You said you didn't know how to answer, then you gave a good answer. I want to also know a little bit more about sort of how you see your musical evolution. Because I think it's fair to say that, you know, probably in that sort of magical period between 68 and 72, is the period when what people expect a Rolling Stones album to sound like kind of got solidified. And the new album, people say, you know, this, it sounds like a Stones album. And I think they mean it sort of has the signifiers of the classic Stones album. And I know there's been lots of experimenting with, you know, reggae, funk, disco over years. But I think it's, it's true that there is a Rolling Stones sound. And as a, as a sort of a creative- I can kind of argue against that in a way if I want to.

41:35What what argument would you make? Well, I'm gonna tell you that you're wrong, but no, but I can take another position, you know, okay? I mean just for the sake of it. I could music because you've been talking about musicality That that's what you're best known for, you know that what the most people if they are not particularly vaguely interested but not very interested Then you're absolutely right, you know that that's what you would say, but I could point out to lots of other things. I'm not a huge student of the Rolling Stones over, you know, I mean, I haven't got it all at my fingertips and lists of it. If I did, I could point at them and say, you see, I could point to, like- Miss you. So many, yeah, I could say, well, that was- Hot stuff. That was that, yeah, but then I could point at Lady Jane, you know. Right, like an Elizabethan- Yeah, and I could point to his tears, go bye. I could point to Angie. Yeah. I could point, I mean,

42:35I could point to painted black. Even like under my thumb, the summer played to me the other day. It means it's vocally, it's very me, but instrumentally and the way it's played is so light and it's so, it's so sort of like, it's not heavy at all. Everyone's playing really lightly. And so there's other versions of the band. And that's what I think makes the band an interesting band. Obviously it's not the same people either.

43:05you know she smiles sweetly is another one from yeah very old but but you know it's interesting that the songs that you noted are all songs that came before I guess with the exception of Angie before that period I suggested yes but even after that period I can point out other ones yeah but I just I don't remember them as well You know, and there's not Elizabethan ones, but there's many other ones. And you said Angie, that's not in that period. And there's lots and lots of others, you know, waiting on a friend. It's a kind of rumba, you know, ballad rumba. I mean, it's, you know, it's like, and very light with an alto saxophone lead. It's not really what you would expect. But are there styles of music that just, you know, you maybe

43:53wanted to do or sort of like dream projects that you had in the back of your mind that you thought sort of because of maybe audience expectations or what you thought the band would be interested in that you didn't pursue. Yeah, well, yes, but you can pursue them, but you don't take them to the kind of doing a whole album of them. You know, I can say I like Samba music, so I did sympathy for the devil. I have never done another Samba, but I listen to Samba all the time.

44:22So I could say, well, I mean, but no one's interested in me doing a whole Samba record. I can't imagine anyone being interested. I mean, I'd like to do another Samba tune, but you don't want to pursue your whole interest in Samba down so far down the road. I mean, I love Latin music of all kinds and rhythmically speaking, there's so many different rhythms.

44:49I would like to pursue that and maybe I could have or should have pursued that more because I'm really interested in those rhythms, you know, so, so, yeah. So, but if you're in a rock band, you get to touch on them, but you don't get to fully explore them. There's a beautiful version you did of a long black veil with the chieftains, probably 30 years ago. And I thought, oh, it would have been, it would be great to hear a Mick Jagger album of like traditional Irish, British and American hope tunes. Yeah, I mean I've done that and I mean the thing is that the all the members of the band of Keith and Brian and To some extent all like that music Ronnie also I mean we it's kind of our kind of in a way It's our home music, you know and even though the sort of 80% of

45:46Our music is influenced by black culture, which we have a huge debt to owe to black music and everything. We also acknowledge our own roots in that in that other music, you know, by playing those songs, you know, I mean, long back, I long back, I was, I think I heard Johnny Cash do that first, but it sounds like an Irish or English song. And I did it with the Chiefs, which is an Irish.

46:16Was an Irish band, but it's it's You know it could be an English song or border ballad or you know that I was we were all very interested I'm we're all brought up to read border ballads Which are neither English nor Scottish or Irish, but it's it there They're amalgam of all of those things are very very similar background I'd also like to ask you about rock a little more broadly and generally, you know, it's this music that you've given your Creative life to and you know the the still in 2026 the biggest rock concert draws are like Gen Gen X bands and baby boomer bands and I've seen data that actually suggests that catalog music You know older music has more streaming market share than younger music and and is continuing to trend trend that way and I think that even if you think about

47:10you know, like the busiest younger rock band of today, right? Which is a band like Geese. I don't know if you're familiar with them. Yeah, I am. They're even, even a band like that still kind of feels like a, you know, culturally marginal band to a certain extent. And so my question to you is... What do you mean culturally marginal? You know, they're not in the center of the culture. Like, you know, it's there, they don't have... Well, no, but Geese, I mean, I was talking to them in an interview, someone asked me.

47:38Everyone was talking about this band and when I played them, I thought it was going to be more like an indie band, you know, but it was much more experimental than I thought, which I thought was great. You know, I mean, I liked it, but it wasn't what I thought when people were describing it to me or reading about it. So, yeah, so it's very hard for a band as experimental as that to be. To break through. To be, you know, in a center of a mainstream music, I think, at any time.

48:07I mean, maybe in the 1970 it might have been, but now I wouldn't have thought so. But anyway, I mean, maybe they will be, maybe I'm wrong. Do you have thoughts about the vitality of rock music as a whole or its place in the culture right now, given that the most popular exponents tend to be older artists? It's kind of an unusual... But despite the fact that rock music, as a genre, is not really the mainstream center of music. It still has a lot of supporters and it still has a lot of young teenage people that want to play it, you know, in all kinds of forms of it, you know, and you hope that it evolves, you know. Rap was kind of the center of our music like 20 years ago and now it's like rap is not the force it once was really.

49:07But everyone incorporates it. You know, you incorporate it into everything. It's one of the strands of popular music like rock is like, you know, rap is like straight pop is like all these things we have all these strands in popular music that really I wonder, you know, it's really rather artificial. A lot of times when we describe music, I didn't touch on this before in our conversation.

49:38So it's a marketable, when you have to market things, you want to tell people what they are. So this is mint flavoured, okay? So everyone normally likes that. So it's mint flavoured ice cream, it's mint flavoured this.

49:58So you put the genre of mint, I'm selling mint-flavored products. It's a bit like that music. So that you... So people know what they're getting and you can... They know what they're getting, you know. So you don't want to scare them. So we've got cut up all our genres into like little slices. But the reality is that most musicians appreciate all kinds of music. So what I'm saying is there's a lot of... Music has a lot of history and it shouldn't really be...

50:26By intelligent people shouldn't be slicing little bits and so I only like this bit, you know I don't like folk music. What does that mean doesn't mean anything? What's folk music all these invented things, you know, right? They're arbitrary distinctions. They are yeah, I saw a quote from Keith the other day saying, you know, the band probably Yeah, it's probably not going to be able to do long tours anymore, that there might be, you know, there's hopes to do residencies and things like that. And I don't know how you think, but do you, you must have some doubt about whether or not the Rolling Stones will ever go on a... Yeah, I mean, I've doubt about it. When I hear that, you know, I've doubt about it. I don't mind touring a tour. I mean, residencies are...

51:16If you can't do any shows and you can't go anywhere, then you have to do rents. Obviously you have to go to the arena. You don't have to do it for your bedroom. But I suppose you could. But you've got to go somewhere. So I would say, well, you can't just do. So if Harry Styles says he's doing residences, but he's doing London, Amsterdam, and so on and so on. It is a tour. It's not only London.

51:45Do you know what I mean? But do you think the Stones will do another, you know, wide-spanning? I hope so. That's all I'm saying. I would hope so. I'm very pleased to be able to... I want to do it. I'm up for doing it. I like touring. The thing is, the only thing about doing resins is it makes it for the people that want to come and see you, it makes it much more expensive. It really does. I mean, think about it. You have to travel, you have to get a hotel and you have to buy a ticket, which would not be cheap. You know, so that...

52:15It'll be cheaper than the World Cup in the United States. It was much easier when it was in Germany because Germany's a smaller country. Do you think you'll know when you've walked off the stage with the Rolling Stones for the last time? No. I don't think you'll ever know.

52:38Maybe I have. I don't know. You never know. I get run over by a bus outside of my house. You never really know, do you? You know what's going to happen to you in life. But I mean, I personally hope to be able to tour again. I love touring. I like going places. You know, I like meeting people. I like to go to weird countries, you know.

53:02and do shows. I was doing a promotion with Indonesia, and I did a show in Indonesia once on my own, which was so crazy. It was so hot. It was unbelievable. People were like, Europe's heatwave. It was so hot. And I was out there, and it was daytime. There was so many lights. I was like, why am I gonna wear? And this guy reminded me of my show in Indonesia. And I said, yeah, I do a show in Indonesia. So, you know, it's really, I love doing that. I love going to India.

53:32And when one we did two shows in India, you know, now India is a big market. Can I ask you a completely tangential random question? I was looking and now so the fact that I couldn't find it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But I could not find any quote or record of you commenting on singing backing vocals on Carly Simons, You're So Vain. No, I can't find it anywhere. But when did you realize that?

54:01Some people thought the song was about you. Well, it wouldn't be about me when I'm singing on it. And no, it doesn't make sense. But people people think that's what it was. That was a big thing, wasn't it? You know, because she would never reveal who is about. And then she I never thought to ask. Yeah, I never thought I was just a song. It sounds like a good title. It was just a song. I'm just the backing vocalist because I knew the producer whose name I'm now going to forget. Richard Perry. Oh, there you go. Yep. You're Richard Perry.

54:31and was a guy I knew, you know, and he was in London and he just found me up and said, can you do the backing vocals? I love doing those sort of things, especially with, you know, if he's a female, you're the male part. You know what I mean? It's slightly different doing it with men, but I don't care. So I just went along and did it. I thought it was a great song, you know, and it was a big hit for her.

54:52I was never created to be the feature. These days I'd be the feature, you know, be Collie Simon featuring Mick Jagger. But you never said to her, you never said to me, who's this one about? I'm louder than her on some of it. I know, in the chorus, yeah.

55:08Well, thank you for clear that up. No, we've now added to the sum total. Well, we're talking about cleaning things up. So, so I said to you at the beginning before we got recorded. I said, well, now the record's been reviewed everywhere. A lot of reviews for it. And I've got Louis lots of nice reviews. It's weird how people though, they give you really, I mean, it's gotten some great reviews. And I'm really appreciative of that. Something's nagging at you. Obviously. No, no, I'm not nagging. It's just that people Then they hear one word and they don't really listen to the line. So Mick Jagger has a go at Elon Musk. You're not listening to the line, you're only listening to Musk. That's all you hear. Musk, he must be having a go at him. You are, I do call him mad.

55:59And he's the one person you name on the whole album, no other person. He's name checked, the only name check. It seems like it would have some importance. The funny thing is that when I wrote that, I was thinking that because of him, they were able to get those astronauts back that were stuck because he provided the transportation because NASA couldn't provide that.

56:27transportation. So that line, the line of the song is about when I was a kid, I used to want to go to miles and everything. And then, and then I said, who would trust, who would you trust to get you into space? And would you trust Boeing or was it NASA or was it Mad Mogul, Mr Musk? So it's really a side one in compliment because he was the one that I remembered was able to do that when the others couldn't.

56:52Yeah, well that's what you get for using the adjective mad and mogul and mogul mogul doesn't always go down well either you know No one likes a mogul. No one likes a mogul. He's good It's it's a Persian word, but you know nobody likes to be called it You know I had asked you about the lyrics to sway when we spoke the first time I have another lyric question that I want to ask you My favorite Rolling Stones song which I think is also the best Rolling Stones song, is you can't always get what you want. And I think it's a simple sentiment, but I actually think there's something profound in the chorus, which is you can't always get what you want, but if you try some times, you just might find you get what you need. And what's something that, or the last thing that you really...

57:42Tried to get that you wanted to get oh my god that you couldn't find and so you got what you need to lead to a personal lead to a personal wish Sure No, I think I I Can't recall one that stands out honestly. Well, that's a good life my friend. I mean, I'm sorry I mean, obviously, there's all kinds of things in daily life that everyone has frustrations. I mean, I was very frustrated professionally for years that the Rolling Stones never made any new music. That was a huge frustration for me. And I solved it, you know?

58:32Yeah, I solved it. And I mean, with everyone else's help, obviously, but they had to agree to it. You know, it was like, huh? And I said, you know, I mean, it's like, okay. But you know, it's like, that was a huge frustration. I mean, you asked me these really difficult questions and I'm trying to come up with something to say it, but that was a huge frustration. And if you do an interview with me four years ago, I would have said that.

59:03There's another old clip I saw of you from a press conference probably Really old one one of those because we don't press conferences for hundreds of years really old I think maybe connected to a Madison Square Garden concert in late 60s something like that and someone Just asked you know you just ask you some vague question like how do you think about being in the Rolling Stones and you describe the Rolling Stones as financially dissatisfied sexually satisfied philosophically trying. There's just a Pat answer to a news conference in New York where you used to say, people used to throw you just really dumb questions, but that was quite a good one. Yeah, that was, but so don't give me the Pat answer in 2026. Where do you stand with those three things? My, my interest in philosophy is superficial. Right. I mean, mainly because I find a really hard subject. I mean, I really,

1:00:01I really find it difficult because I need a teacher. I can't just do it from reading. I can't. And when I was in college, I did some philosophy courses. And that's hundreds of years ago. And I didn't really... I make one reference to in the song. Oh, in Jealous Lover, there's a Plato reference.

1:00:30Shadows on the wall. Yes. You got it. Well done. They got it. But on my cave, that's even more obvious. But I find it a really hard subject to educate myself into. And I've recently read a couple of books on it. I'm really finding it hard. And they're always having so many arguments, these philosophers.

1:01:00And they're always, like, disagreeing with their masters. And then the master disagrees with them. I was reading this book on Kant, and he... So, how's this people? I can't find his name. Then he writes a book. They're attacking his own master. And then Kant replies to him, you know. They're quite rude to each other. And then they have to make up later. And none of it, I can understand what they're really talking about. You know, was Kant a Christian? Was he an atheist?

1:01:29I think it's cool that you're reading Kant. Well, it's sort of vaguely fashionable. Wait, but so let's say Phil's out, you're still trying and let's just, you know... I'm sticking with that one. I'm still sticking with that 1965 quote. All right. Mick, you know... Thank you so much. A corny way to end, but it's been a gas, gas, gas. Oh no, that's awful, David. That's terrible. That's Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones' new album, Foreign Tongues, is available now.

1:02:03To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash ad symbol the interview podcast. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orm. It was edited by John Woo, mixing by Sophia Landman. Original music by Marion Lazano. Photography by Phillip Montgomery. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Seth Kelly, Paola Newdorf, Joe Bill Munoz, Eddie Costas, Amy Marino, Mark Zimmel, David Herr, Catalina O'Brien and Brooke Minters. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. I'm David Marchese and this is the interview from The New York Times.